Other reading and Chetwynd-Hayes

I have been reading New Scientist magazines from the library, and re-reading some Patricia Wentworths, and trying a few library books. R. Chetwynd-Hayes (World of the Impossible) completely failed my style test. He is full of people retorting and admitting and enquiring and pleading and snapping instead of just saying. Even when it is obvious who is speaking he has to tell you. This gets very wearing in just a few pages.

The stereotypical characters are English and the time supposedly the 1960's, for the brief time they are in Britain, but their speech and class relationships seem pre-World War II or earlier. One character is given a briefing paper on all the characters (including himself) and where they are going, and all seven pages are plonked into the text at that point. This is lazy writing.

After a while I started flicking pages at random, looking for cliches; I never had to read more than half a page to find one. How did this bloke get the British Fantasy Award? Even if it wasn't for this book, which I didn't finish.

World of the Impossible first published 1998

Poetry and Wislawa Szymborska

When I read a translation, I often wonder how much is the author and how much the translator. Here are 2 translations of the same poem, which is about an idea so translates better than most I should think. I like lines from both poems. Szymborska won the Nobel Literature prize in 1996 for her poetry, and is a very interesting poet.

In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself
The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
In every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun,
among the signs of bestiality
A clear conscience is Number One.


IN PRAISE OF SELF- DEPRECATION

The Buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
Live as they live and are glad of it.

The killer-whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.

There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.

There are more translated poems here, try the two about the soul (one poem, different translators, one version much better than the other I think) and my favourite, A Word on Statistics.

When the King Comes Home by Caroline Stevermer

In this short book Stevermer uses that difficult to achieve technique, the first person narrative where we see the person's character as they tell the tale - think of Browning's dramatic poetry, such as My Last Duchess.

Hail Rosamer has the artist's single minded determination and blinkered view.The obvious disparity between Hail's view of her character and her place in events, and those of the people around her can be amusing, and yet it is fairly subtly done. And the events are interesting - Stevermer has no trouble producing interesting plots.

This is the first Stevermer I ever read, the one that made me seek out other books she had written, and on re-reading I still like it best.

When the King Comes Home first published 2000

A Scholar of Magics by Caroline Stevermer

An interesting theme in this book is its look at what different people need and want to live a satisfying life. What is a satisfying life to one person may not be to another. Though this is just a side issue to the plot, which is seen through the eyes of an American in Britain (late Victorian or Edwardian times).

Though this is set soon after A College of Magics, you don't need to have read the first book, as it is not a direct sequel, more set in the same world. Jane Brailsford is the only common character on stage. I like this book better than the first, probably because of the assortment of clearly delineated and eccentric characters. And the ending, of course.

Patum Peperium, or Gentleman's Relish, is an anchovy paste.
A Scholar of Magics first published in 2004

A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer

The first time I read this book I liked it but thought it was a little disjointed. It doesn’t seem that way on re-reading though. The book is divided into 3 parts, in the first Faris goes to a college cum finishing school (and reads a lot of three part novels), the second is journeying (with several stops) and the third, well that would give away too much plot.

Faris has had plenty of things in her life to make her defensive, which makes her uncomfortable for many people as a Point Of View character. Also this book makes you feel the emotional cost of being a hero and losing what is important to you. Usually this story is told from the POV of a trusty sidekick rather that the hero. So much more comfortable for the reader to be able to sympathize with losses from the outside! Not that the ending is that miserable at all.

It is also a fantasy that is not medieval, and although set around 1900, is not steampunk. This is one of those books that some people like a lot and most people don’t. I like it a lot.

A College of Magic first published 1994

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

I always feel cheerful after reading a new Pratchett book. Today I bought and read the latest Pratchett, and yes I feel cheerful. How does he go on writing amusingly and have a plot too? This book has Moist von Lipwig, the um, hero of Going Postal, as the hero again; this time lumbered with attempting to modernise banking and money.

I thought this book started a bit slowly, but even while thinking this I noticed I was carrying the book everywhere so I could read it any any spare half minute. We are also introduced to two new departments in the Unseen University, my favourite being the second one. Lots of characters from earlier books make cameo appearances, without slowing the plot in any way and usually making some point useful to the book.

Yep, this is another Pratchett worth buying in hardback, rather than the long wait to rise to the top of the library wait list (all the librarians are at the top of it I'm sure) or the whole year for the paperback. My husband is only up to page 17 and he's already read 3 or 4 bits out to me.

Making Money first published in 2007

The Golden Bough by J.G. Frazer

This book has been my lunchtime reading for a while now - I work in the light industrial area and there is nowhere to go for lunch. Frazer has a very readable and euphonious style, and lots of charming stories and accounts.

Unfortunately, when ever he mentioned an Australian Aboriginal belief or custom as an example of whatever he was talking about, I found myself muttering "That's not right!" and "Oh dear, he hasn't quite understood that." Which made me less inclined to trust his other anthropological examples.

A little internet research and I found several references to support my mutters, best summarised by this wikipedia quote "Parts of the book, most notably its discussion of the symbolism of magic and its elucidation of the concept of sympathetic magic, remain accepted by scholars today. The larger theme of dying and reviving gods has not fared as well in the world of anthropology and comparative religion; most contemporary anthropologists have concluded that Frazer overinterpreted his evidence to fit it into his system."

I think he is an excellent source for fantasy writers, and for reading for pleasure, but I wouldn't take him as a prime source for anything else. I am reading the abridged 1922 version, without the notes and attributions.

The Golden Bough first published 1890, abridged version 1922

To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey

This is one of Tey's charming detective stories. Like so many of her works it is concerned with identity and how people present themselves. Natasha Cooper puts it better, saying she had an obsession " with the masks people wear and the truths they hide." Tey wrote a famous play in her time; in this book a number of amusing minor characters are from the world of theatre and writing. I expect they all recognised other people but not themselves...

It is scarcely possible for a god to love and be wise - Publicus Syrus (1st century BC)

It is not granted to love and be wise. Francis Bacon (1605)

And the title is definitely a clue to the solution of this detective novel, which is rarely guessed on first reading it, though you can see the clues on the second read. I have read this book several times over the last 20 years, and still find pleasure in it.

To Love And Be Wise first published 1950

Agatha Christie 1920's Omnibus

I have been on a light detective novel binge lately, reading the four Christie novels in this omnibus, which are all from the 1920's and do not feature the irritating Hercule Poirot. She is closer to the type of writing Margery Allingham, whom I like a lot more, did in these novels than in her later works. She also has a turn for more interesting characters, and for humour, than later on. I found the diary extracts in The Man in the Brown Suit definitely amusing.

As was fairly common in detective novels of the era, there are lots of criminal masterminds and events of national & international significance. I've read people saying detective novels show how concerns have changed each decade reflecting what people were concerned about, but I'm not so sure. These days people saving the nation/world and defeating the great criminal mastermind/dark lord are rarely found in straight detective novels, but only because they have migrated to thrillers and fantasy.

I have also read 2 Patricia Wentworths, The Chinese Shawl and Through The Wall. All this has been in between slowly reading an exhausting science fiction novel about the fast moving future, which I will finish eventually. It has been a pleasure to go between it and the slower moving past, where a girl terrifies her male passengers by driving at 50 miles an hour, and people spend several days on a train and a week or two on a liner.

Omnibus first published 2006; The Secret Adversary first published 1922, The Man in the Brown Suit 1924, The Secret of Chimneys 1925 & The Seven Dials Mystery 1929.

Poetry and WH Auden

I have been reading WH Auden's poetry lately. If you want to try some of his more popular poms, here are links to Roman Wall Blues, Lay Your Sleeping Head, or Funeral Blues.

Auden sometimes writes longer works in sections, each section having a different rhythm, style, line length and so on. His poem on the death of the poet WB Yeats is a great example of this, it is like 3 different but linked poems. I love the third section.

This is a section from The Quest, I thought it was amusing. Sections X, XI and XV are interesting too.

XIV. The Way
Fresh addenda are published every day
To the encyclopedia of the Way,

Linguistic notes and scientific explanations,
And texts for schools with modernised spelling and illustrations.

Now everyone knows the hero must choose the old horse,
Abstain from liquor and sexual intercourse,

And look out for a stranded fish to be kind to:
Now everyone thinks he could find, had he a mind to,

The way through the waste to the chapel in the rock
For a vision of the Triple Rainbow or the Astral Clock,

Forgetting his information comes mostly from married men
Who liked fishing and a flutter on the horses now and then.

And how reliable can any truth be that is got
By observing oneself and then just inserting a Not?

W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973

The Dollmage by Martine Leavitt

I found this book unexpectedly powerful. It is quite short, and I found it in the Young Adult section of the library. Leavitt is Canadian.

The book is told in the first person by the dollmage of the title, who points out her own mistakes as she tells the story to her community. This sounds like it would be boring or preachy, but it isn't. Mistakes have consequences, and this book does not pretend all mistakes can be fixed just because you can look back and see what they were.

Leavitt has flawed characters who do wrong and yet can still maintain your sympathy and interest - well, most of them. This book is worth reading.

The Dollmage first published 2001

White Tiger by Kylie Chan

Bruce, who is a martial artist, loaned me this book. When he had read about half, he said the relationship parts of this book were irritating but the fighting was OK. Further on he commented the heroine being so exceptionally good at everything was also irritating and didn't seem necessary for the plot. He also strongly disapproved when 2 characters disobeyed their martial arts teacher during training and weren't ashamed after.

I always skim over fights in books, so I won’t comment on that. I found the relationship stuff irritatingly repetitive for the first third, but after that I didn’t find it irritating. In fact I liked it, and found the book as a whole an interesting read. However I think this book could have done with some editing. Too many things are said too often, and too many heavy handed hints are dropped, and the book moves a bit slowly in parts. Hopefully these are first book faults.

I enjoyed the use of Chinese mythology by Kylie Chan in this book. I have read some Chinese folktales and a very little Chinese mythology, but I feel inspired to read more now. I will be reading the next in the trilogy.

White Tiger was first published in 2006

The Fair Folk edited by Marvin Kaye

This is a very good collection – not wonderful, but good. The humans don’t always win in their dealings with the elves, fairies, other. There is a good variety of styles, themes and plots in the 6 stories, the shortest of which is about 50 pages long.

I loved The Kelpie by Patricia McKillip. She is one my favourite authors, and this delightful story is is about some people in a set of artists, similar to the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite painters. It is about more about relationships and choices than the intersection of humans and the fey.

The shortest story is by Megan Lindholm, Grace Notes, showing the problems you can have when your life intersects with the fey and you have never heard of them. The fey expect you to follow certain rules after all – which is a problem in a different way in UOUS, the Tanith Lee story.

The Kim Newman had an awkward style I thought, but I kept reading it as it was very interesting. It was another story set in Victorian times, and I may have found the style strange because I have read a fair few popular Victorian authors, and the style was neither that nor modern. Probably it won’t put off most people, and I still plan to read more by Newman if I can.

I didn’t like the Craig Shaw Gardner story, it was a not funny enough attempt at humour. I liked the Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder much more than I expected I would, in fact it is one of the three stories I will be keeping this book for.

The Fair Folk first published 2005, all stories first published in this collection

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

This book has no words, yet with pictures only Tan made me feel like an immigrant to a strange and bewildering country, where I couldn't read the numbers or the writing or the maps, or understand the language. The buildings, the animals, the food and the way to buy a ticket were all strange.

Shaun Tan writes picture books for older readers, he says on his website. This book is dense and I couldn't read it all in one sitting. It shows the confusion of the immigrant, the longing for family left behind, and the kindness of strangers. I had read several reviews and descriptions of this book, yet still found it more powerful and moving than I expected.

"I became aware of the many common problems faced by all migrants, regardless of nationality and destination: grappling with language difficulties, home-sickness, poverty, a loss of social status and recognisable qualifications, not to mention the separation from family." Shaun Tan

And I loved the last four pages, but you'll have to find the book to read them.

The Arrival first published 2006

Dancing on Knives by Jenny Pausacker

I ending up liking this book, to my surprise. The first 2 pages were boring, and I only kept reading as I had vague memories of hearing Pausacker commented on favourably. The next section, teenage girl (Rochelle) behaves oddly under stress, wasn't all that interesting.

Then Rochelle gets involved at a bookshop that specialises in fairy tales, and starts to think of situations and people she knows in terms of fairytales. This is not an escape from how things are for Rochelle, so much as a tool to help her think. It isn't always easy to apply your mind to your own emotions, and fiction (written and visual arts) can be a help for many people, though used less often in fiction than in real life from my observations.

I wonder if this book would be less or more interesting to people who don't already know lots of fairy tales and myths. There was only one story mentioned I didn't know, an Aboriginal story from the dreaming about how a local bay was made (I live on the other side of Australia to the city on the story). I know from talking to otherwise well read friends that some of the fairytales mentioned are not widely known, such as East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and Rose Red and Snow White.

I borrowed this copy from the library, but I may well buy it. There are lots of books on 'teenager struggles to cope with fallout of parents separating, especially if parent/s aren't coping too', but I liked the references to tales and story telling.

"People say that our lives aren't stories and fiction makes stories out of them, but I think one of the things fiction does is remind us our lives are stories. The trick is, there are three or four or eight different stories going on simultaneously, overlapping and with other crap happening that is not related to one particular story. ... Fiction gives us a sense of perspective, a sense of purpose. We don't have to turn our lives into stories; we just have to dig out the story that's there as a natural result of living." quote from Rosemary Kirstien in an interview.

Dancing on Knives first published 2004

Two books by Tamora Pierce

I read 2 books by Tamora Pierce while in bed with a bad cold. Pierce is easy to read, so is eminently suitable for such times. One was Terrier, about a girl called Beka starting work in the police service in a medieval type fantasy setting with magic and gods. The other was Trickster's Queen, sequel to Trickster's Choice, about a girl called Aly helping run and plan a revolution to get rid of a bad ruler and put a better candidate on the throne, in the same sort of setting.

It isn't a good idea to read two Pierce's so close together though, it brings out her flaws. Pierce will over-egg the pudding - all her main characters are gifted at their jobs or desired vocation, are recognised as such by all around them, have good mentors, gain or already have the interested attention of high status persons, and have the help of the gods. Beka has a cat recognised as from the gods by everyone as it has purple eyes and behaves in very helpful ways. The Trickster god talks to Aly and sends her other assistance. Aly needs to spy on people - her aunt sends her the fantasy equivalent of listening bugs, conveniently tiny beings who can shape change.

The heroines never have tests of character in the novels, only tests of competence. They are always brilliantly competant at the climax of the book. Early in the novel they may briefly fail through inexperience, but in no other way. Read one Pierce at a time when you want something undemanding.

Terrier was first published in 2006.

Trickster's Queen was first published in 2004

Dark Alchemy edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois

This is an excellent collection of stories.

My favourite was the Patricia McKillip, Naming Day. I think McKillip is surely the only writer who could write about a teenager in a school for teaching magic and not have Harry Potter even cross the reader’s mind. (I read the seventh Potter the same day it came out, and re-read the previous 6 in the weeks before, but he certainly didn’t cross mine!) And Kage Baker’s The Ruby Incomparable came second – Baker manages to be comic and interesting, and also comment on parenting and growing up in this story about the children of a Dark Lord and his saintly wife.

This book has a high proportion of interesting ideas that are carried out well. My prize for most interesting goes to the Tad Williams story, The Stranger’s Hands, as I kept stopping and thinking about the situation.

I am not a fan of Gene Wolf at all, but I liked his story. I can take or leave Jane Yolen, but I thought Slipping Sideways Through Time was very moving. The stories by Peter Beagle, Orson Scott Card and Nancy Kress were all excellent.

I own several books of short stories with only one story in them I want to keep. There are 14 stories in this collection I want to keep, and three of the remaining four are well worth reading once.

Dark Alchemy was published in 2007, all stories not previously published elsewhere, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

The Lighter Side by Keith Laumer

My initial reaction on picking up this book was that I had never heard of Keith Laumer, but the first story in the book, In The Queue, was a story I had read years ago and never forgotten. It's the one about the bloke waiting most of his life in line (in shifts with other family members) to present his papers to the government.

The Lighter Side is a collection of short stories and one short novel, Time Trap. I purchased it on eBay as part of mixed set, and have been reading it over the last few weeks with amusement. Laumer has the ability to take a well worn idea from science fiction, present it amusingly, and then provide a different ending. You'd think that no-one could find anything more to say about 'friendly alien being comes to earth and gets shot by local xenophobe'. But Laumer's town council in The Exterminator, distressed at the bad publicity the xenophobe has provoked, manage to find a new solution to this perennial problem in fiction.

I also enjoyed The Planet Wreckers, which I had heard of but never read. I thought it must be a poke at all disaster films of the last decade or so, but it was first published in 1967. And The Body Builders, also amusing, was written in the 1960's not the 1990's; Laumer must have been psychic.

I could mention a few more stories, but will just say I kept finding I was smiling when I finished most of the stories in this book. An enjoyable read.
And for those of us not from the USA who read this book, a rutabaga is also known as a swede, a swedish turnip, a yellow turnip, or a neep.
The Lighter Side collection first published 2001, contents first published 1964 to 1970

Nora Roberts & J.D. Robbs

Roberts and Robb are the same person. I read Vengeance in Death by JD Robb, which is set 50 years in the future, not that you'd notice if you weren't told on page 2. OK, I did notice two items which haven't been invented yet, but other than that nothing much has changed. I found it a fairly absorbing read, though I doubt the motivations of the person/s the detective spends the book chasing - and catching , naturally. She is a police detective, and someone is trying to frame her husband, or possibly his butler, with a series of torture murders. I may read others in the series.

I also read Black Rose by Nora Roberts, which is a romance. It was a bit too much like a soap opera for me, everybody emoting all over the place, and doing things hardly ever done in real life, like asking their mother's new boyfriend his intentions. I kept skipping whole pages of dialogue, but the plot still made sense, which is a bad sign. And why did people have to keep thinking or saying how wonderful the main character was? A definite thumbs down, but if you like the type of TV soapie where everyone goes around confronting each other loudly and emotionally, give it a go.

Vengeance in Death first published 1997
Black Rose first published 2005